


Life, Living, and The Self

by penlex



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 +1, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Psychology mumbo-jumbo, Recovery, Regression, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penlex/pseuds/penlex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After having had all of his memories and personality completely wiped by Hydra, Bucky Barnes is a blank slate. His identity as his own person has to be rebuilt from the very beginning.</p><p>
  <i>“Erikson's eight stages of development,” Tony explains. “Psychology mumbo-jumbo, you know. I, uh. I kind of went through this when I found out about Obi and how my whole life was a lie? Regression, and all that horseshit. Obviously to a lesser degree, though. Anyway."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Steve is pretty hesitant to think of Bucky like an infant, but after the fifth time Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night crying desperately in the dark, Steve figures it's probably time to admit that Tony was onto something.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, Living, and The Self

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I am neither a therapist nor a parent, so this may or may not be totally inaccurate and shouldn’t be taken seriously. It was a just fun way for me to explore Erikson’s eight stages of development for an assignment and isn’t meant to represent any real situations of trauma survivors or children.

#

Steve and Sam find Bucky three weeks into searching for him. Natasha responds to Steve's (not at all smug) text, “pics or it didn't happen”. But Bucky is hunkered down behind the dumpster of a chain restaurant that Steve remembers used to be a friendly milkshake joint where the swankiest teens would take their dates, back before everything, so Steve tucks his phone away and approaches – not too quiet and not too loud, of course – as if Bucky were the angry raccoon his makeup made him look.

They take Bucky back to Avengers Tower, because it's big and close and has the highest security of any building in the whole country, in the discreet but heinously expensive car that Tony sends them because Bucky's metal hand clenches hard enough to make some really ominous noises when the buses or the taxis get near. Bucky refuses to get in the car with the chauffeur, so she dismisses herself with a level of professionalism that Steve admires and which reminds him of Agent Hill, and Sam drives. Almost as soon as the purr of the engine comes to life underneath them and the soothing hum of wheels on road starts up Bucky is fast asleep with one hand curled in his own hair and the other in his truly grungy undershirt, but Steve stares straight ahead at the neat row of miniature booze bottles that he should have known to expect in a Stark's car. He contemplates taking one, for all the good it won't do him.

Tony sets Bucky up with his own room, like he did for everyone else long before anybody agreed to move in (and most of them still haven't). He throws one together for Sam too and insists he stay, and Steve takes advantage of his own predestined floor. Now that Bucky's here, Steve can't imagine being anywhere else. Maybe never again.

For the first couple of months, Bucky doesn't speak at all. He doesn't feed himself, or bathe himself. He's malleable as all hell, and it's the scariest thing Steve's ever seen in his life. Bucky stays where he's put, sleeps when he's brought to a bed, follows people with his eyes and does nothing else. But somewhere around the third or fourth month at Avengers Tower, Bucky starts making _noises_. No words or anything; he never even opens his mouth.

“But it's something, right?” Steve demands of Sam. Sam only shrugs helplessly in response because “I don't know, man,” is all he has to offer. He's never seen anything quite like this, he says. He's out of his depth, he says. He's a volunteer cum counselor not a doctor, Steve, lay off.

Surprisingly, it's Tony who comes to the rescue. He hands Steve a little book titled _Life, Living, and The Self_.

“Erikson's eight stages of development,” he explains. “Psychology mumbo-jumbo, you know. I, uh. I kind of went through this when I found out about Obi and how my whole life was a lie? Regression, and all that horseshit. Obviously to a lesser degree, though. Anyway.” He disappears again, to wherever it is that he goes, and Steve doesn't attempt to follow. By now he's all too familiar with the walk of a man who doesn't want to be needled.

#

**1\. Trust vs Mistrust:**

Steve is pretty hesitant to think of Bucky like an infant, at first. But after the fifth time Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night, not screaming from nightmares like Steve, or gasping like Tony, or reaching for weapons like Natasha, but instead crying desperately with a wide open mouth and wide open eyes in the dark, Steve figures it's probably time to admit that Tony was onto something with this stupid book. So instead of leaving Bucky be to blink away the past and come back to his true surroundings like the rest of them prefer, Steve grabs an extra blanket and goes to his room to turn the light on for him. He wraps Bucky up in a fluffy blanket hug, pets his hair and rocks him, and tells him that everything is okay.

“I'm here,” he repeats until his voice goes hoarse. “Nothing's gonna happen to you. Everything is alright. You're okay.”

Steve starts waking Bucky up in the mornings (at exactly the same time every morning because that stupid little book stressed consistency, dependability, and predictability) and running a bath for him. He washes Bucky's hair, and then methodically works the tangles out with a roundbrush he borrowed from Natasha while Bucky sits incredibly still. Sometimes Bucky hums at him a little, and Steve tries to remind himself that that's progress. Steve feeds Bucky from a spoon or from his hand, and Bucky opens his mouth for each bite and chews until Steve offers another, looking all the while at Steve with stars in his eyes. Steve waits until Bucky takes to the couch or the floor for a nap like he needs it until he lets himself cry over his own cold and soggy breakfast.

Nine months into Bucky's stay at Avengers Tower, at one in the morning, he brings himself into Steve's bedroom of his own volition.

“Steve,” he says, and Steve is awake in a blink. There are tear tracks down Bucky's face that shine in the light pollution from Steve's window, and he doesn't wipe or try to hide them. Instead he crawls into bed with Steve and tucks his wet face into the sleep warm crook of Steve's neck. He wraps one hand in his own hair and the other in Steve's t-shirt.

“It's gonna be okay, Buck,” Steve says. He's choked up, but he doesn't think Bucky notices because all he does in response is mumble “Okay,” and fall asleep.

“Okay,” Steve repeats hopefully. “Okay.”

#

**2\. Autonomy vs Shame/Doubt:**

Steve gets barely one fucking day before Bucky transitions directly into the Terrible Ninety-Two's. It starts easy enough, with Steve literally right on over the moon as Bucky explores the communal floor of the Tower on his own. That is until Bucky starts touching everything, which Steve guesses would probably be fine if Bucky had any concept at all of his own strength. He's quietly and guiltily glad that Tony almost never surfaces, because if he did Steve would have a lot of broken things to explain. But the inadvertent destruction is by far not the worst.

The worst also is not that Bucky starts hoarding. He takes most of Tony's things that he puts out of commission, like he broke it he bought it or something but without actually paying for anything. He takes food, pamphlets from Sam's little workspace, and art supplies from Steve's. It's all in a big pile in Bucky's room, which he periodically rearranges and tilts his head at like a puppy, scooching a days-old bagel this way and a colored pencil that until it somehow strikes him as just right. Steve wants to clear the mess away, make Bucky's space barracks inspection ready, but he grips tight to that stupid little book that Tony gave him and ignores how his heart half breaks and half swells when Bucky gets his ill-gotten junk in perfect placement and grins proudly at Steve with an excited hum.

Steve tells him, “Looks great, Buck,” even as he grits his teeth against the itch in his fingers for disinfectant and maybe a toothbrush. He complains to Sam, who tells him nothing. But even without a single word, he's plenty articulate. The look on his face says plainly, “Maybe you need therapy too, dude.” Steve ignores that, and rubs the likely already pristine countertop with a rag.

No, most definitely the worst is the rage. One day when Bucky is reaching out for one of Tony's bottles of fancy giggle juice, one which Steve knows not only is the most expensive stuff on the shelf but also was Howard's favorite and so has a very specific kind of value to Tony, Steve shouts quickly from across the room, “No, Bucky, don't touch that!”

Bucky turns to him with the ugliest look on his face that Steve has ever seen: eyebrows down, lip curled, teeth clenched. Where Steve has been thinking of Bucky as a child for almost a year, his adult attributes are suddenly very clear – the strong jaw and the stubble Bucky will no longer let Steve shave, the broad shoulders, round delt and hard bicep, the strong bones in his wrist, his sure-footed stance on solid legs, the _metal arm_. It takes Steve a full minute to remember that he doesn't have to fear for his life from Bucky anymore (and if he did it wouldn't matter, but that doesn't stop his heart from racing). Maintaining a deadly kind of eye contact, Bucky reaches out with his metal arm, grabs the liquor, and then without any kind of preamble or even a blink he throws it with force to the ground, spraying glass and booze all over the entire kitchenette and his own bare feet.

Steve lets himself react on instinct, marching over and picking Bucky up under his armpits. He plops Bucky down face first in a corner, and while Bucky doesn't resist that he does pout _viciously_ , and as soon as Steve's back is turned he puts his metal fist through the wall in front of him and yanks out some insides, throwing them all over the floor too. At a loss, and furious, Steve simply storms off and leaves him there, only to come back hours later to find that Bucky hasn't moved, and that he may or may not have cried.

The guilt is nothing short of crushing, akin to what Steve felt when he realized he should have gone looking for Bucky in those mountains, but Steve knows thanks to that stupid little book that he shouldn't let Bucky see it. Instead, he turns Bucky gently away from the wall, hugs him tightly, and explains why what he did was wrong and how hurt Tony's feelings will be.

“Do you understand?” he asks. Bucky's still pouting a little, but his eyes are a tad watery when he nods so Steve's pretty sure he's not still being ornery. “Okay,” Steve says, too brightly it feels like. “Help me clean all this mess up, and then we'll watch a movie, okay?”

Bucky does, and then he goes downstairs and invites Tony to the movie and even lets him pick.

#

**3\. Initiative vs Guilt:**

A little over a year since they found Bucky and moved him in, he starts following Steve around everywhere he goes and imitating everything he does. Half the time he seems honestly curious about Steve's actions, and the other half he makes dissatisfied faces and frustrated noises with his lips as if Steve is incomprehensibly silly. Bucky tires of Steve pretty quickly, and copies Sam for a while, as well as Tony, and Bruce when he's around, which is very discomfiting for the poor doctor.

Bucky watches Natasha, Hill, and Pepper like a hawk when they drop in, but never copies them. After a couple weeks he starts holding doors for them, and letting them shut in the men's faces with a self-satisfied smirk. Natasha scolds him for it one time and he never does it again. She also scolds Steve, Sam, and Tony for being bad influences, and immediately moves into the Tower. Tony pretends to be inconvenienced, but even without the fact that he built her floor before Steve's, it's impossible to remain convinced when Jarvis gladly plays footage of his happy dance in the elevators. Bucky laughs at the video and doesn't imitate Tony at all after that, except to make good fun.

Two weeks later he asks for a mirror. Steve has been dutifully reading that stupid little book, so he knows that Bucky is forming opinions on his body, which may or may not be sexual in nature, so he feels a little uncomfortable about getting him one (for all that he knows he shouldn't because Bucky is a grown ass man, and a deadly assassin to boot). Still, he springs for the full-length antique he sees in a storefront window.

Bucky starts closing his door, and Steve figures that's because he's spending a lot of time naked so he lets it be. It's been a while since Bucky had a catastrophic nightmare, anyway, so there's nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing to worry about.

Steve catches Bucky a couple times staring at him when he comes back from some of his runs bare-chested, wiping sweat off his brow with his shucked shirt. He refrains from quipping, “See something you like?” because that is _so_ not appropriate for Bucky's mental state and inquires instead, “Whatcha doing, bud?” but Bucky never answers, just gets Steve a glass of water and asks how his run was.

It's only days with the mirror in his room before Bucky marches out into the communal floor's living room one hundred percent buck naked ( _ha_ ) while Steve and Tony are hanging out. The first thing he does is give Steve a truly nasty look, which Steve can think of no good reason for. The injustice flees his mind pretty quick, though, when the next thing Bucky does is grab hold of the bottom of Tony's shirt and yank it upward.

“Now wait a minute!” Tony exclaims as Steve yells, “Whoa, hey!” but Bucky cuts them both off pretty effectively by stating calmly that, “Steve doesn't have scars.” Tony tips his head back against the couch, and Steve is pretty sure his super hearing catches him mutter, wistfully and/or ruefully, “ _Aah_ , prepubescent sexuality,” before he commandeers his shirt back from Bucky and holds it up to his chin himself.

“I'm of the, somewhat biased, clearly, opinion that scars just make your body more interesting,” he tells Bucky with the same inexplicable level of authority he manages to put into every bit of nonsense he sells to all the people who desperately need something to buy. He's like the emperor king of emotional consumerism.

Bucky traces the starburst of scar tissue over Tony's sternum for a few moments, making thoughtful noises in the back of his throat. He must reach some sort of verdict because he declares out a simple, “Yeah,” and puts on some pants.

After that Bucky closes his door less often, wears a shirt less often, and has much looser limbs. He gets a haircut too, but one that Steve hasn't seen before, and would probably never have seen back before everything. Tony tells Steve it's called a wolftail, and Bucky says he likes it because he can have both long hair and short hair – he doesn't have to pick, doesn't have to pretend one is more _him_ than the other. Steve courteously ignores that it's not really about the hair, and Bucky rewards him with a big grin and a kiss on the cheek.

#

**4\. Industry vs Inferiority:**

Tony and Sam both recommend to Steve that he should encourage Bucky to spend more time with their other teammates, but Steve drags his feet about it. It's not that he doesn't think Bucky can handle a little extra social interaction, it's just that after everything that's happened, and with everything that's happening now, Steve has developed this weird protective jealousy of Bucky. He doesn't want to share, just in case someone takes Bucky away again, or worse – Bucky decides he likes someone else better on his own. But after a very short, and very frightening, talk with Pepper in which Steve was compared quite a few too many times to Tony (or rather, to how Tony used to be), Steve straightens his spine and takes Bucky to the Tower's communal gym.

Bucky meets Barton first, mostly because he's is the only one there. He's swinging around on a bunch of wild bars and ropes that Steve doesn't have any hope of knowing what to do with, though that doesn't stop him from being duly impressed when Barton greets them with even breath and his body in a perfect straight line up as he balances on his hands on a bar seven feet off the mat-covered floor.

Steve leaves Bucky with Barton, asking about how strong the bars are, conceivably so that he can suss out whether or not they'll be able to take him and his metal arm. Steve goes over to the punching bags so he can keep an eye on Bucky even while they both do their own thing.

Bucky takes like a fish to water with everything he does, and even from his relatively distant vantage point Steve can practically see the arrogance building. He catches Barton's eye and subtly mimes shooting a bow and Barton is all too glad to comply. The two snipers line up at the paper man shooting stables, one with a recurve and one with a rifle. They shoot, and Barton bests it. Bucky gives him a sour look, but he seems pretty okay. He's just had a little hot air let out of his flying balloon.

“How about some hand-to-hand?” Bucky suggests slyly, saccharine sweet innocence completely ineffective when paired with those narrowed eyes. If Steve didn't know better he'd say Barton got a little green about the gills.

The team starts having trivia nights. Most of the time Bucky sits right next to Steve, a little too close on bad days, but sometimes he lets there be space between them, and sometimes he sits with someone else. He almost never knows an answer, but then neither does Steve, or Thor when he joins them. Bucky teases Tony and flirts with Natasha and also with Phil when he's around. His laugh comes easy.

When Steve cries in his room at night now, it's not because he's sad.

#

**5\. Identity vs Role Diffusion/Confusion:**

There's a period of a few months where Bucky changes all of his preferences to the complete opposite of what they were a week before. Steve (and everyone else) tries to keep up but it's pretty exhausting and he doesn't always get it right.

Bucky gets really angry sometimes, has started breaking things by accident again. This time he puts them back together though, and then he uses some of Tony's money to buy himself a model airplane making kit. His metal fingers go through the brittle wood pieces and he destroys the table he was working on, even though Steve can tell he wants to cry instead.

Bucky paces around the Tower, stops sleeping as much, and won't eat what Steve makes him. He has a mysterious chat with Barton, and then disappears for three weeks. Steve is furious, and even grounds Hawkeye for as long as the rest of the team will let him get away with it (which isn't long).

“Moratorium,” Tony says, a non-sequitur as they play gin rummy. “He's gone off to _find himself_ , Cap. He'll come back. It's necessary.”

When Bucky does come back it's with the short parts of his hair shorter, the tail part of his wolftail held up and together with a bright red band. He's got a bit more beard, but it's nice and kept now, even and clean. There's new clothes too: he comes in wearing a pair of very tight black jeans and a too loose heathered Henley, which to Steve don't seem to match too well, but which Natasha nods at approvingly. Bucky is also wearing his dogtags, which he admits without shame that he stole from the Smithsonian.

“They're mine, huh?” he proclaims. “Why shouldn't I take 'em?”

He plops himself down in between Clint and Natasha, where there was no actual room for him, and throws his arms around them both.

“I'm fuckin' sick of silence,” he tells the room loudly. “Let's watch an action picture.”

They do and, in a pleasantly surprising turn of events, nobody has to leave the room in a panicky rush when the explosions happen.

#

**6\. Intimacy vs Isolation:**

They're putting ornaments on the biggest Christmas tree in New York aside from the one put up by the city in Rockefeller Center when Bucky asks Steve, “Remember that year you got pneumonia?” Steve stops what he's doing to look at him, because they _never_ talk about the past. Not ever. And yet here Bucky is bringing it up.

“Yeah?” Steve acknowledges, trying to be encouraging but not pushy. Bucky won't meet his eyes, keeps putting up ornaments. A gigantic plastic gold one first, and then a tiny little porcelain angel, a wooden cross and a crystal Star of David.

“I pulled all sorts of reckless shit to get you some proper medicine.” Up goes a tiny sculpy clay Iron Man. “This kid gave me this cure-all vitamin stuff, you remember? Turned out you were allergic.” The Hulk joins his comrade, and Bucky spends a few long moments moving the two little sculptures around on their branches until their faces touch and they look like they're kissing. Hard to tell whether it's just a joke or really passive aggressive matchmaking, but either way it's not relevant right now, because Bucky eyes meet the floor when he whispers, “I almost killed you,” and it's obviously not about the stupid magic beans.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, because it's true – Bucky did almost kill him. “Almost. But you didn't.” Bucky meets Steve's eyes sideways, one long escaped strand of hair looped behind his ear. Steve hands him a blown glass reindeer, and hangs his own shiny metal candy cane (the color scheme is just like Bucky's arm, and Steve may or may not let his warm fingers linger on it just a tad too long). “And you didn't mean it, Buck,” he adds quietly. “You didn't mean it. That's what's important.”

Bucky is silent as he painstakingly finds the perfect place for his reindeer, but then he says, “Okay,” and flicks some silver glitter at Steve out of the big plastic bin of festivity they're digging through.

Bucky serves Steve spiced (or is it spiked) eggnog with a stick of peppermint in it, and sips from his own glass which boasts raw cinnamon instead. He comes away with a cream mustache, which Steve wants to lick off. He ignores the impulse until Bucky drags him under some mistletoe and kisses him until the cinnamon flavor in his mouth is stronger than the mint.

New Year's Eve comes and goes (and Tony gets roaring drunk while Natasha and Thor maintain straight postures and challenging eye contact after ten shots of straight vodka each even though by all rights Natasha probably should be dead from that). January 5, when they're all rolling their eyes at a photo of Spiderman on the front page wearing a backpack with a Monotype Corsiva anigramed P, Bucky decides to move into Steve's room. He doesn't ask, which is fine because there's only the one possible answer.

More months later, and Bucky is rocking out to the Kelly Clarkson blaring directly into his by now very damaged ears, dancing wildly in just his navy blue boxer briefs in front of the antique mahogany wardrobe Tony bought them as a 'congrats on the sex' gift and singing at the top of his lungs, “ _You tried to break me but you see – what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!_ ”

Steve is reclining in their bed, reading that stupid little book Tony gave him so long ago. Bucky throws himself on the bed, bouncing them both up and down and displacing their fluffiest pillow onto the floor. He grabs Steve's book with his metal hand and tosses it at the window, off of which it bounces harmlessly and lands with a soft thump on the cushioned niche seat (god they are so _rich_ now).

“Quit reading that shrink garbage,” he says, and snaps his teeth playfully. “I think I'm all up to date now.” Except that when Jarvis informs them politely that, “Ex-Director Fury kindly requests that you both go the fuck to sleep,” Bucky jumps about a foot in the air. Steve raises an eyebrow and does an awful job withholding his laughter.

“Okay, so maybe not _all_ up to date,” Bucky admits reluctantly. “But hey, you know what we're not gonna do for Captain fuckin' Killjoy down there?”

“Oh, do you ever behave?” Steve asks, but he's grinning and so excited to get into trouble with his best guy again.

“Jarvis,” says Bucky. “Be a fella and teach us the _worst_ love song of 2016.” Steve laughs and laughs and kisses Bucky hard, even though it's really just their grinning teeth pressing against each other. Whatever the last two stages of life are, Steve and Bucky will go through them together and that's all Steve really needs to know about them. And for now, they'll sing and dance in their underwear and keep awake the geezer who's not in charge of them anymore.

No one's in charge of them anymore.

They both have their own _Self_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me [on tumblr](https://fortheglare.tumblr.com/)


End file.
